When it comes to the lawyers in Donald Trump’s orbit, the former president has a multifaceted problem. As regular readers know, some of his former and current attorneys are receiving unwelcome scrutiny from criminal prosecutors. Others are facing disbarment. Others are quitting.
And some are saying things that don’t necessarily help their client.
Take Alina Habba, for example. As Trump prepared to be arraigned for alleged crimes related to his post-election wrongdoing, Habba, a prominent member of the former president’s legal team, held a brief press conference. As part of a larger set of comments, Habba conceded that “everybody” on Team Trump “was made aware that he lost the election.”
That probably wasn’t the ideal message for Habba to acknowledge — since part of the indictment focused on the fact that a great many credible people surrounding Trump told him the truth about his defeat, making it that much more difficult for him to claim that he didn’t know the facts about his loss as he tried to overturn the results.
But Habba isn’t alone. Special counsel Jack Smith’s latest indictment also accuses Trump and his alleged co-conspirators of illegally pressing then-Vice President Mike Pence to delay certification of the 2020 election results.
It was against this backdrop that John Lauro, who’s helping defend the former president in this case, appeared on CNN on Tuesday and effectively confirmed that Trump urged Pence to delay certification of the 2020 election results:
“The final ask that Mr. Trump made to Vice President Pence, was simply pause the voting. There’s nothing inherently unconstitutional or illegal about that.”
Of course, the fact remains that Trump was also asking Pence to participate in a scheme to delay and overturn the election results. I should also note that in that same interview, the lawyer appeared to argue that he didn’t see a problem with fake electors, either.
Nevertheless, Lauro also appeared on Fox News after his client’s arraignment and echoed the line: “What President Trump said [to Pence] is, ‘Let’s go with option D. Let’s just halt, let’s just pause the voting and allow the state legislatures to take one last look and make a determination as to whether or not the elections were handled fairly.’ That’s constitutional law. That’s not an issue of criminal activity.”
For good measure, Lauro also appeared on Newsmax, and said roughly the same thing: “[Trump] desperately wanted to get to what happened during the 2020 cycle. … He asked Mr. Pence to pause the voting for 10 days, allow the state legislatures to weigh in, and then they could make a determination to audit or reaudit or recertify.”
Andrew Weissmann, a longtime Justice Department veteran and an MSNBC legal analyst, took note of the on-air comments and concluded, “This was not a smart move.” Whether prosecutors might try to make use of this rhetoric remains to be seen. Watch this space.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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